Because new parenthood delivers so many new things to fight about! Not only are you faced with a learning curve for lots of new tasks, most new parents also experience an increase in expenses and a dramatic decrease in sleep. Those shifts ramp up your sensitivity and reactivity to each other, and your ability to just think and respond clearly. Plus, being responsible for a brand new being can put even the best of you on edge as you worry about caring for your baby and delivering that care effectively, while sometimes being unsure how best to respond to your baby’s needs. All of these factors–and others unique to you and your life circumstances, e.g., some of you are also caring for aging parents or grandparents, some are navigating a postpartum mood disorder–increase conflict with your spouse. In other words, while more conflict after your baby is born can be stressful and upsetting, it is also common. Read Fight Right for Your Baby to learn more about how to manage common conflict and differentiate it from ways of Fighting Wrong that warrant assistance from a mental health professional.

There are probably many topics that you and other new parents fight about that don’t appear in Fight Right for Your Baby, as we only focused on the most common areas of disagreement. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most if not all of the Tools in our book can be applied to a wide range of relationship challenges. We encourage you and your beloved to select the Tools that resonate most for you, or inspire curiosity, and then test them out with the topics over which you currently struggle. It’s helpful to start your exploration of Tools with a “smaller” topic, one that ignites sparks between you vs. wildfires.

Books and other resources like podcasts or discussing problems with friends and family, can all be really helpful. Yet sometimes connecting with a neutral third party, like an individual or couples therapist or a relationship coach, is most beneficial. If the Tools in Fight Right for Your Baby aren’t enough to assist your relationship to the extent you most desire, or if your struggles are acute (for example, your partner is verbally or physically abusive, or you or your spouse feels ready to end your relationship), please contact a mental health professional as soon as possible.

While we are already writing our next Fight Right book–Fight Right for Your Kids (and with them too!)–it will be a while before it’s published. In the meantime, there are relationship resources worth checking out: Sue Johnson’s book, Hold Me Tight and the weekend workshop by the same name; John Gottman and Nan Silver’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work; and Stan Takin’s book and workshop, Wired for Love. While parenting isn’t the focus in those books or workshops, many of the strategies shared are easily applicable to raising kids together. Another resource worth checking out is Keeping the Joy in Relationships offered by Positive Discipline. Positive Discipline is a wonderful parenting program (Rhona is a Positive Discipline Parent Educator) that has been adapted to adult relationships. This workshop provides the opportunity to learn strategies for your relationship that were originally developed as very effective parenting tools, so it offers a win-win approach.